Healthy, Low Carb, 'Fried' Chicken Recipe

This is one of those recipes that happens to be incredibly healthy and low carb, but one you would completely forgo the full-fat, high carb version for. In other words, it's completely delicious, you need to make this.

If you're in need of an implausibly simple, chuck-it-all-in-the-oven-at-once dish, then check out my Low Carb Chicken Traybake, but for today's post we focus on getting our KFC hit without all the 'bad-i-ties'!

I've slightly personalised this recipe from Gimme Some Oven (amazing blog) and had to share it because it's just so. damn. tasty. The trick is, the coating. Whilst still being delicious and flavourful, it's not made of bread, or any other grain for that matter, meaning we can cut down on refined carbs and sugar without feeling hard done by!

The secret is hemp seeds. They're incredible delicious and nutrient-dense, full of omega 3, iron, magnesium, quality protein and fibre. 30g of shelled hemp gives you over 10g of protein, around 15g of fat (mostly omega 3 and 6), 21% of your RDA of iron and has only 2.3g carbs, the majority of which is fibre. I'm definitely calling this a superfood.

I'm going to cease the rambling now and just jump right into it, here's what you'll need.

Preheat your oven to 200C and line a baking tray with greaseproof paper.

Mix your hemp, almonds, spices and seasoning together in a shallow bowl/deep plate.

Cut your chicken into long strips and break and mix an egg onto a plate.

From left to right you want to set up your station as follows: chicken, egg, coating, baking tray. Then comes the messy part! Dip your chicken strips into the egg, then into the 'breadcrumbs', then lay onto the baking tray. Repeat with all your strips.

Once they're all lined up like little soldiers, spray lightly with oil. I used a Misto spray and they're fabulous for saving heaps of calories by using miniscule amounts of oil, but this is a good cheaper alternative.

Into the oven for around 15 minutes, depending how fat your little soldiers are (mine are thin), turning halfway through.
(Do the sensible thing and cut the fattest one open to check it's cooked! If so, the others should all be cooked, if not, back into the oven for another 5.)

Transfer to a plate and serve immediately!

This time I accompanied my little chicken fingers with a leafy salad, with these dinky little Tomkin tomatoes and some naughty Red French Dressing, and some coleslaw. I've fed this to my friends aka unknowing test subjects and have received rounds of compliments before and after they hear about the nourishing and healthy ingredients!